You Are Not Your Brain

• You cannot control the initial thoughts or stop them from coming. • You cannot block the physical or emotional sensations or stop them from arising. • The more you pay attention to the deceptive thoughts and uncomfortable sensations (and try to make them go away— which is the primary way you inadvertently focus attention on them), the worse they get: • The frequency of the deceptive brain messages increases. • The intensity of the uncomfortable sensations increases. • The more you engage in an unhealthy behavior, the stronger the brain circuits supporting that behavior become. This makes it much harder to break the habit once it forms. WHAT YOU CAN DO • You can choose how you respond to a deceptive brain message or uncomfortable sensation. • You can learn to change the meaning of deceptive brain messages and sensations. • You can learn various techniques to manage your emotions and decrease the intensity of the sensations. • You can focus your attention on what is important to you, not solely the messages coming from your brain. Encouragingly, an explosion of scientific research in the past ten years substantiates what John did, how it changed his brain, and why our Four Step program works so well. We will discuss some of these findings in Part Two, when we explain the Four Steps and the skills needed to master them. For now, we simply want you to be familiar with these findings: • Labeling an emotion (as in Step 1: Relabel) increases the activity of the Assessment Center and quiets the unhelpful aspects of the SelfReferencing Center and the Uh Oh Center’s false alarm. • Reframing a situation (as in Step 2: Reframe)—seeing it from another perspective or in a different context—activates the Assessment Center and further calms down the Uh Oh Center’s false alarm.

• Mindfulness—using the Four Steps as you focus your attention on moment-to-moment experiences (staying focused on what is really happening right now, rather than focusing on the dialogue of the SelfReferencing Center)—activates the Assessment Center and the helpful aspects of the Self-Referencing Center. We will begin Part Two, “The Skills,” with chapter 6, where we will explore where many of our most deeply held deceptive brain messages come from: our experiences in life and especially our childhood. Summary • The Self-Referencing Center can be helpful or unhelpful, depending on how it is activated. • The Assessment Center works with the Wise Advocate to take in and process all relevant information. • The Assessment Center supports the Wise Advocate and acts as its executive arm. • The Wise Advocate is a guide that helps you see the larger picture. It recruits your Assessment Center so that you can learn to dismiss the deceptive brain messages, not take things too personally, and ignore the false alarm coming from your Uh Oh Center. • Together, the Wise Advocate and the Assessment Center empower you so that you can make decisions that are rational, in your best interest, and aligned with your true self. • The Four Steps are scientifically grounded, rooted in mindfulness, and teach you how to: • Accurately identify your deceptive brain messages, sensations, and habits • Reframe the meanings of deceptive brain messages and the alarms coming from the Uh Oh Center • Focus your attention on healthy, constructive behaviors • Strengthen your Wise Advocate

• When you use the Four Steps on a consistent basis, you literally rewire your brain based on your actions: The brain circuits associated with unhealthy behaviors wither while the circuits supporting healthy habits are strengthened. This occurs as a result of Self-Directed Neuroplasticity, Hebb’s law, and the quantum Zeno effect.

PART TWO The Skills

CHAPTER 6 Ignoring, Minimizing, and Neglecting How Deceptive Brain Messages Distort Your View of Yourself At the beginning of her work with the Four Steps, Sarah, the bright young public relations specialist, came to us in a very frustrated state and launched into a story about an interaction she had with her boss that she could not get out of her head. They had been working on an important press release and Sarah had done everything right. Her boss had told her the release looked amazing and that she had done a great job. He assured her that the client would be “quite happy” and then mentioned that next time she should try to get the job done earlier so that they did not have to scramble at the last minute to get everything done. Devastated by his one corrective comment, Sarah felt “deflated,” like all the energy had drained from her body, and she could not hold the positive comments he made about her efforts in her mind. She had worked very hard and even stayed late the day before to make sure everything was done perfectly. Although she did not say anything to him, she knew the reason they were running around at the eleventh hour was that her boss kept making changes up to the very last minute. It wasn’t her fault the press release was going out so late; it was his inability to be clear about what he wanted in the first place that caused the delay. Despite knowing this, Sarah kept doubting herself, running the events of the day through her head and wondering what she could have done differently. She blamed herself and felt horrible about her work. Rather than giving herself credit for what she did right and accepting that unpredictability can throw a wrench in the best-laid plans, she berated herself and said, sadly, “I felt like a loser yet again.” When she finished, we asked Sarah why she didn’t thank her boss for the advice and realize that the reason the project was late was because of him. In other words, why did she take his comments so personally? She seemed startled

by this question, almost as if it was coming from left field. “But he’s my boss,” she replied. “I have to do whatever he asks in the way he asks for it. In fact, on the way over here, I realized I should have been able to figure out what he wanted or that I should have picked up on the clues better. Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention well enough; maybe he did tell me what he wanted and I just missed it. Either way, I was the problem—it must be my fault.” When we pointed out to Sarah that her belief that she needed to be perfect was a deceptive brain message and that she was minimizing her abilities and contributions by wholeheartedly buying into his version of events, she became visibly upset. She said in all seriousness, “I know what my brain is doing, but what I really want to know is why do I overanalyze and overthink every interaction I have? Why can’t I just drop it and move on with my life?” Throughout the years, many patients have asked us this same question: If the deceptive brain messages are false and not me, then where did they come from? Why are they there? All too often, people want to know: Are the deceptive brain messages and unhealthy habits the result of my biology, childhood, environment, bad luck, or something else? Our response always begins in the same way: Humans are incredibly complicated beings and there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Biology and environment interact in complex ways to shape how we think and what we do. That said, we tell people that most deceptive brain messages arise from our incredible ability to absorb information—how we learn and adapt in healthy and unhealthy ways—especially in childhood. To Sarah, this intuitively made sense, but she still couldn’t help wondering where some of her most entrenched deceptive brain messages came from. She knew she often felt like a “loser,” especially when her boss corrected her, but believed she had a good childhood and that her parents were great. “No one yelled at me or beat me, they were around, we lived a comfortable life . . . what is there to complain about?” she asked. She had a good group of friends and did not remember having problems at school. She was active and engaged in life as a child, so “there was no reason I should think like this,” she said. When we encouraged Sarah to pay attention to the negative comments in her head and put a name, voice, or face to them whenever they arose, a surprising thing happened. She started to remember an incident with her older brother when she was six years old. It was a hot summer day and the family had gone out to get ice cream. Sarah loved mint chocolate chip in a sugar cone and could not wait to have one—it was always a special treat. Once everyone had their ice cream, the family sat at a picnic bench and dug in. Unfortunately, Sarah dropped her cone on the ground by accident. She immediately became embarrassed when

her brother started laughing at her and mocking her. He loudly announced what she had done and told her she was a “useless, pathetic loser.” Not helping matters, her mother responded by telling Sarah that the consequence of not paying attention was that she would have to go without any ice cream that night. Perhaps, her mother mused aloud, this would be a lesson to Sarah that she needs to be more careful—otherwise, she will miss out on things in life and people will not trust her to be responsible or worthy of important tasks. When Sarah was able to see how something that seemed so inconsequential actually had a significant impact on her, she could properly place her deceptive brain messages in context. With that insight, she was able to understand that the negative thoughts about being a loser likely stemmed from repeated seemingly insignificant interactions like those when she was a child and that her reactions to her boss emanated from the same place. Realizing that the way she was treated as a child was still affecting her helped her separate those deceptive and false messages of the past from who she really was—a bright, young professional who was absolutely capable and reliable. We All Have Genuine Needs and True Emotions Why would inaccurate messages from the past leave such an impression on Sarah? How did she learn to incorporate these deceptive brain messages into her psyche and adopt them as markers of who she was? The answer, we told her, lies in the fact that we are powerfully shaped and affected by our sincere desire and need to connect with people on an emotional level. Especially as children, we want and need the important people in our lives—the ones who are caring for and protecting us—to genuinely hear, see, understand, and accept us. This is what makes us feel safe and allows us to explore our world from a secure position. This sense of safety and security is what also enables us to share our true emotions and needs as we travel through our lives. 11 Our first—and most important—bonding relationship was with our caregivers, 12 those people whom we relied upon to provide virtually everything to us when we could not provide it to ourselves, including comfort, safety, food, shelter, love, and affection. In essence, we sought them out for all of our fundamental physical and emotional needs and looked to them to provide us with an emotional safe zone, a place where we felt protected from the dangers of

the world. With this supportive environment in place, we could learn how to express our deepest true emotions and spend the majority of our time learning, growing, and exploring our environment in ways that allowed us to become independent adults capable of navigating the world in healthy, adaptive ways. In addition to providing us the security to explore and grow (i.e., what children are supposed to be encouraged to do), our caregivers were our first models for how we should treat ourselves and the people around us. From them we learned how love is expressed, what we should and should not do, how we should think about and view ourselves, what we deserve in life, and so on. These messages are what we carry into adulthood and use to define our sense of self— our concept of who we are. Safe Zones Help Us Process True Emotions Constructively That emotional safe zone in childhood was critical because it provided you with the necessary training ground to learn how to deal with your true emotions, such as anger, sadness, grief, fear, happiness, and anxiety, in a constructive, loving way. It is in this space that you would have been taught that allowing and expressing (rather than suppressing) your true needs and emotions was a caring, healthy act. How would you have learned this? From how your caregivers treated you and others in your life (including themselves). If your caregivers were relatively emotionally available and responded to your needs and emotions most of the time, you felt soothed and safe, understood and loved. For example, if you cried when you fell and your mom13 showed concern and caring for your scared, sad feelings while also not becoming overly dramatic, upset, or alarmed by the event, you would have walked away from that experience calm and comforted— and your Uh Oh Center would have been soothed by your mom’s interest, love, caring, and affection. This loving action by your mom would have taught you that your true needs and emotions were important and would have provided you with examples of how to choose healthy responses to soothe yourself when you are upset or dealing with difficulties. If you had many such experiences, you would have grown up firmly knowing that your true emotions, needs, and interests mattered and that it was safe and acceptable to express them with the important people in

your life. This ability to acknowledge your true emotions and needs—and to interact with people in genuine, honest, and loving ways—would have kept your Uh Oh Center relatively quiet most of the time, unless of course you were in real danger. “GOOD ENOUGH” CARETAKING–THE 50 PERCENT MARK Our caregivers did not have to be perfect, but we did need them to respond to our needs, emotions, and interests in a genuine, interested way most of the time—or acknowledge and apologize for the times when they failed to meet our true needs. Conversely, if our caregivers did not respond to our legitimate cries, overreacted whenever something happened, disregarded or minimized our true fears, smothered us, catastrophized about what might happen, used our needs to control us, or did not show interest in our activities, lives, or emotions, these actions would have led us and our brain to conclude that our genuine thoughts, emotions, interests, and feelings did not matter. It also would have signaled that we were not safe, which would have caused our Uh Oh Center to fire often. This repetitive firing of our Uh Oh Center would have led to chronic distress and anxiety that the brain would have tried to calm with unhealthy habits. In short, we needed our caregivers to do their best, to be “good enough,” by responding to our needs, concerns, and fears with love, attention, and affection at least about 50 percent of the time. If they were able to do this, we felt safe, our Uh Oh Centers were calm most of the time, and we took away from our childhood healthy ways of coping and responding to stress. If they could not, we left childhood with many deceptive brain messages, a chronically firing Uh Oh Center, and many unhealthy ways of behaving and coping in the world. Most Deceptive Brain Messages Are Learned

What if the opposite happened when you fell? What if your mom, who was completely overwhelmed and stressed herself, became annoyed with your tears, told you to “suck it up,” dismissingly said it was “no big deal . . . stop being a crybaby,” or devalued, ignored, minimized, or neglected your genuine reaction in some way? What would your kid brain take away from that reaction if it happened once? Would you feel calm, safe, and soothed, or would you begin to equate expressing true emotions and needs with danger? How would you make sense of her reaction? What if this occurred many times throughout your childhood? This is exactly what happened for Sarah. At key moments, when she needed people to understand and attune to her needs and emotions, she unfortunately received a very different message—that she would be loved and accepted only when she was “perfect” and did not bother anyone with her true emotions or needs. These repeated interactions left Sarah seeing herself as a “burden,” someone who was not worthy of unconditional love, acceptance, and affection. If you are like Sarah and had many such interactions as a child, you would have become chronically anxious and concluded that the problem was somehow related to you, not the important caregivers in your life. Although Sarah’s mom and brother loved her and truly did want the best for her, they had their own limitations that Sarah’s growing brain simply could not incorporate into her thinking process. She could not see that their inability to be emotionally available, respond to her true needs adequately, or acknowledge or apologize when they had made a misstep had nothing to do with her. Instead of being able to see that it was not her fault that she was not receiving the care, love, attention, affection, and interest she—and every child—deserved, she received the message that her true emotions and needs did not matter. Her directive in life, so her young brain thought, was to devalue or neglect her true emotions and needs, just as her caregivers did. This is how her deceptive brain messages were born and how Sarah learned to second-guess and demean herself whenever her needs and true emotions emerged or when she thought she was disappointing someone important to her, like her boss. Habitually Ignoring, Minimizing, and Dismissing Your True Needs and Emotions Is Painful

Another consequence of being chronically ignored, minimized, dismissed, neglected, and devalued, as Sarah knows all too well, is that it causes deep pain and sadness to develop. In response to such treatment and a perceived threat to her safety (i.e., that her caregiver might not be available to her), Sarah’s young brain learned to suppress these hurt, sad, and angry feelings related to not having her true needs met. To deal with this dilemma and keep herself “safe,” Sarah’s brain learned to mask and replace those deeply painful feelings with deceptive brain messages, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and overthinking. This was ostensibly done to ensure that her caregivers did not abandon her. Although the deceptive brain messages and unhealthy responses kept her from having to deal with that genuinely deep sadness and pain, they also caused her Uh Oh Center to fire often and resulted in her spending most of her time anxious, depressed, or filled with self-doubt. No matter the response, she was stuck, living under the thumb of deceptive brain messages, unable to approach life, and especially her true emotions and needs, from the loving, caring perspective of her Wise Advocate. Instead, she went through life assuming that she was the problem, unable to see herself as a person deserving of love, compassion, understanding, and caring, and firmly believing that her deceptive brain messages were true. If you are like Sarah, this stifling and unhealthy approach to your true emotions and needs also was fueled and maintained by the deceptive brain messages you learned in childhood. Like everyone, you have a sincere need to be seen, heard, understood, and loved for who you are and you wanted to be able to connect with the important people in your life by being able to express your true emotions and needs to them. Unfortunately, the deceptive brain messages kept you from believing you were worthy of such genuine connections, which led to considerable pain, sadness, and grief that you continue to carry with you to this day. This means that the more you squelch your true needs and emotions, the more the deceptive brain messages are fueled and the more entrenched they—and their associated responses of anxiety, depression, excessive anger, addictions, unhealthy habits, and miscommunication—will become. That is, unless you do something to change your perspective on those deceptive brain messages, allow your true self, emotions, and needs to arise, and begin to see yourself from the loving, caring view of your Wise Advocate.

Your Brain Was Sculpted by How You Learned to Deal with True Emotions and Needs In chapter 3, we taught you that the power is in the focus and that repeatedly focusing your attention is what stabilizes brain circuits so that they can wire together. This means that if your caregivers repeatedly focused their attention in loving, caring ways on your genuine needs and emotions, you would have learned to do the same thing. In that scenario, your brain would have learned that tending to and caring about yourself was a priority, which would have caused your brain to wire in ways that would allow you to automatically notice and value your true emotions, needs, and interests from a balanced and loving perspective. Conversely, if your true needs and emotions were ignored, dismissed, or neglected often, you were given the covert message that you were a problem and that your emotional needs and reactions did not matter. In those cases, you would have learned that you should not tend to your own distress in a balanced way, but rather should either endure it or overvalue it, 14 since this is how your caregivers approached your genuine distress. In essence, you would have been taught that your emotions were either inconsequential or something to be hysterical about. Both of these approaches would have led to feelings of helplessness, anxiety, and depression. What’s worse, you would have learned that you were supposed to live with these sensations of anxiety or depression— that such uncomfortable physical and emotional sensations were normal and to be expected. From these lessons, you would have adopted the same unhealthy, maladaptive approaches to your distress (i.e., ignoring, minimizing, and dismissing it), which would have led to fear and insecurity, anxiety and depression, and an endless cycle of attempting to avoid pain and pursue pleasure. 15 In Sarah’s case those intermittent but significant missteps by the important people in her life taught her that she would miss out on opportunities down the road—and possibly be ridiculed for making honest mistakes. As that message took hold, somewhere in her brain, she vowed never to make mistakes again, which resulted in her developing chronic anxiety and the unhelpful habit of always trying to be perfect. Rather than adopting the perspective of her Wise Advocate and concluding that sometimes people will disagree with you, are disappointed in you, or act inappropriately (and it has nothing to do with you), Sarah took the emotional overreactions of her mother and brother literally—as

young brains will do—and she began a lifelong quest to never disappoint people or be made fun of again. Although it was an unhealthy and unrealistic way of dealing with her distress in the long term, in Sarah’s still growing and very literal brain, it made perfect sense. Moreover, there seemed to be evidence that it worked: The more often Sarah was “perfect,” the more she was rewarded and accepted. The problem is that Sarah’s perfectionism came at a steep price: Being perfect and overthinking situations became Sarah’s way of calming and soothing her Uh Oh Center’s alarm and dealing with life’s stresses. As you know from the cycle of deceptive brain messages, once her brain associated those actions with momentarily calming the Uh Oh Center, those unhelpful responses got wired into her brain as automatic habits. This meant that in the future her brain would automatically select those same responses (e.g., being “perfect”) whenever a similar situation arose. To Sarah’s brain, the repeated attention and focus on overanalyzing and monitoring her caregivers calmed her body on a short-term basis, but unfortunately reinforced the idea that these were responses that should be repeated and relied upon. While this approach of striving to be perfect seemed adaptive when she was young and unable to independently care for herself, it often required Sarah to neglect her own true emotions and not to say what she needed or what she thought. Rather than learning to value herself (and her opinions) and use healthy methods to alleviate her distress, Sarah adopted her caregivers’ approach to her, which included often minimizing her own true needs and emotions and viewing herself as a burden. Sadly, this pattern of suppressing her true emotions and not saying how she felt with important people became Sarah’s automatic response. Her brain learned to associate a feeling of danger and anxiety with any situations that were reminiscent of her interactions with her mom and brother or that left her feeling as though she was disappointing someone. This meant that any event or interaction that her brain perceived to be similar (even when it was not) triggered the same uncomfortable physical and emotional sensations inside her body and caused her to act in unhealthy ways, such as overanalyzing, assuming that she was a “loser,” or trying to come up with ways to “fix” her behavior in the future. As Sarah now realizes, this same scenario plays out to this day whenever her boss appears to disapprove of her or correct her actions. Her brain perceives the situation to be as emotionally and socially dangerous as things were when she was a child, which sparks a twinge of that old pain, followed by sharp spikes of anxiety. Her brain responds to that pain and anxiety in its same ways—it ignores, dismisses, and minimizes the pain and instead automatically acts in an unhealthy

way (e.g., overthinking or becoming instantly fatigued and exhausted) in an attempt to alleviate Sarah’s distress in the short term. In the end, these unhealthy coping strategies, based on her deceptive brain messages, caused her chronic distress and made her blind to the fact that she was creating more problems for herself, not fewer. As long as she bought into, and thus paid attention to, the deceptive brain messages—and ignored her true self— she would keep engaging in the same unhealthy patterns repetitively in a hardwired and habitual way. Sadly, as long as she remained unaware of the triggers or associations between her childhood distress and current life situations, nothing would change and her unhealthy strategy of trying to attain perfection would continue to cause problems in all of her relationships. FOUR STEPS HELP YOU RECOGNIZE AND EMPHASIZE YOUR TRUE EMOTIONS As discussed above, deceptive brain messages and uncomfortable sensations block you from accessing your true self or expressing your true emotions and needs. When this happens, you ignore, minimize, neglect, dismiss, or devalue your true self and experience uncomfortable sensations that can lead to unhelpful responses, including depression, chronic stress, anxiety, excessive anger, communication problems, stress eating, substance abuse, unhealthy habits, and more. With the Four Steps, you learn how to break down the associations between unhealthy thoughts and habits so that your loving side, which is aligned with your true self and Wise Advocate, shines through and allows you to respond in beneficial, healthy ways. Deceptive Brain Messages Get Stronger the More You Ignore, Deny, and Neglect Your True Self Clearly, habitually dismissing and devaluing your true emotions and needs causes your brain to adopt unhealthy responses and to strongly discount much of

the positive information about you that is coming in. As Sarah’s story demonstrates, once your deceptive brain messages formed in childhood and took hold in your brain, you began to see yourself from a distorted perspective that did not reflect who you are or your goals and values in life. These inaccurate views of yourself and the desperate attempts to calm your Uh Oh Center caused you to act in ways that resulted in short-term relief but ultimately wired your brain in unhealthy ways. These strategies, while effective in the short run (such as Sarah overanalyzing important interactions to remain as “perfect” as possible), most often are likely to be detrimental in the long run. What Triggers Your Deceptive Brain Messages? How do you begin to change these patterns and teach your brain new ways of seeing you and the world around you? By learning how to become aware of those deceptive brain messages and what triggers them. Only then can you choose to act differently. To begin to make changes in your life, you need to be able to recognize when a deceptive brain message might get triggered. In chapter 1 you made a list of your deceptive brain messages, uncomfortable sensations, and unhealthy habits. Go back and review them now. Then think of situations that might trigger those —or similar—deceptive brain messages. To help get you started, we included some situations that triggered our patients’ deceptive brain messages. For example, Ed and Sarah were often triggered by how people perceived and treated them, whereas Abby often was triggered by having to say no or when she stood her ground. Use these examples as a guide to figure out what situations trigger your deceptive brain messages. If you are having trouble, you can start by writing down your list of deceptive brain messages in the table below and then think about and specify what kinds of situations would cause those deceptive brain messages to arise.

Now that you have identified situations associated with specific deceptive brain messages, add a person or event to that message, as Sarah did with the ice cream incident. Why is this important? It’s not to make you feel like a victim or to place blame on anyone—in fact, this is the opposite of what we want you to do. The reality is that you will be destined to repeat what happened in childhood with the current people in your life if you cannot see how false and inaccurate those messages from childhood were. In essence, you will conflate your

reactions to people in your present life with the upsetting actions and messages of people who hurt or upset you in the past. This means that you will not be able to see the person in front of you for who he or she is. Rather, you will distort your perception of that person, much like Sarah did with her boss. You will not be basing your responses or actions on what is true, but on deceptive brain messages that were formed in your past. For example, John’s near-constant e-mail checking and focus on whether Alicia was going to leave him was based on a series of experiences he had as a boy. Growing up in a cash-strapped family, John watched as his parents took on second and sometimes third jobs to make ends meet. This meant they had little time for him and that he had to figure out ways to take care of himself. Although they loved him dearly and he seemed to be doing fine, he did not have an emotional safe zone and frequently felt lonely. To deal with his distress, John joined a soccer team and formed a positive relationship with his coach. As John explains, he was a star player on the team, which caught his coach’s attention and garnered him praise and many accolades. He became the favorite, which was demonstrated by Coach regularly inviting him over to his house for dinner with his family. This made John feel special and led him to believe that he found a place where he truly belonged and was safe. John excelled in school and on the soccer field until a new boy—who was a far better soccer player—moved into town. Immediately, the new boy took over John’s exalted position on the team and in Coach’s heart. John felt rejected, like he had lost his “home,” and he became consumed with Coach. He wanted desperately to have his old life and sense of security back. The problem was that the only way he could get Coach’s attention or affection was to do things for Coach. So John started managing the team, picking up Coach’s dry cleaning, bringing him his favorite foods, and so on. Whenever he did, Coach praised him and things felt right in John’s world. He was calm and relaxed in those moments and could focus on school, soccer, or something else of his choosing. However, those moments of reprieve never lasted long because John’s influence on Coach was only as good as his last effort or act. From these experiences, John’s brain concluded that he had to continually monitor what Coach wanted or needed—that was how he felt safe and avoided anxiety. Although he did not realize it, John became preoccupied with Coach and his brain took away from these interactions that to receive attention and approval from Coach, John had to give up his life, focus on Coach, and do whatever he could to make Coach happy. This is how John’s deceptive brain message that he must care for others at all costs was born. Sound familiar? This is exactly how John describes acting with Alicia, only

Alicia does not want John to act this way and wishes he would take better care of himself. The truth—that she supports and loves him as he is—is completely lost on John, because he can only see Alicia through the eyes of his deceptive brain messages. In his brain, if he does not cater to her at all times and focus solely on her, she will leave him—and no facts or words will be able to shake that message until he can clearly understand that these damaging messages are not true. Knowing that his preoccupation with the important people in his life came from a place in the distant past—his coach—helped John see why he acted the way he did with Alicia and others he was emotionally close to. Even more significantly, seeing that deceptive brain messages were ruining his life—and that there was another way—helped him vow to use the Four Steps to make important changes. Similarly, Ed realized that his deceptive brain message telling him he was of no value came from how his mother acted toward him when he was a child. “She never treated me like I was important, unless I did something that made her look good—and the bar was high,” he said. For example, excelling artistically meant nothing to her, only his academic grades did. As he remembers, “Unless they were A pluses across the board, she would reprimand me and ask why I had not done better.” She never accepted Ed or praised him for his artistic accomplishments, no matter how many parents remarked at how talented Ed was or how they wished they had a son like him. “Nothing was ever good enough to her,” he sadly recalled, “which left me perpetually feeling like a second-class citizen.” As soon as Ed accepted and internalized that message from his mother—the one telling him he had no inherent value—one of his most deceptive and devastating brain messages was formed. This message plagued him and caused him to avoid many things in life, including auditions and asking women out on dates. He lived a limited life because, at some level, he kept believing that he had no value. That is, until he was able to see, as he explains it, “that this was my mom’s message, not mine. This is not who I am.” Once he realized that for all these years he had been under the thumb of her deceptive message—one that he had incorporated into his sense of self—he felt significant grief for the lost time, but he also experienced incredible relief. Seeing the truth, he was liberated and no longer believed that he was mandated to follow his brain’s erroneous messages. He was able to start “putting myself out there,” as he thinks of it, and create a new life for himself. Take a moment to review your deceptive brain messages and assign a person or persons to those messages. If you have trouble coming up with messages or assigning a source to them, try to recall situations in your life where your needs

and emotions were ignored or where you could not express how you felt to the people who mattered most to you. Also try to think about times when you were dismissed, neglected, or devalued in some way—when you were not accepted for who you were. Keep these original sources of your deceptive brain messages in mind as you begin your work with the Four Steps. While it is absolutely not necessary to attribute each deceptive brain message to a specific person or pattern of events, doing so helps you see that you were not the source of these initial negative thoughts and helps you create a separation between your true self and the inaccurate, false messages coming from your brain. By seeing them for what they are—false messages that your child brain took as literal and real—you will be able to start countering them whenever they arise.

The Antidote to Minimizing and Neglecting Healthy Needs: The 5 A’s From their stories, what seems clear is that Sarah, Ed, and John learned to minimize and neglect their healthy needs as children. As they incorporated unhealthy coping strategies into their lives, they lost touch with their meaningful goals and values and put themselves and their genuine interests and emotions on the back burner indefinitely. What they needed to learn instead—and still hadn’t in their adult years—was that they should be valued and loved for who they are. How could they develop those beliefs now and what would that look like? The antidote to those deceptive brain messages, they learned, was using the Four Steps to truly see that those negative brain messages were absolutely false. In truth, they were good people who strove for what we all want—to be loved, valued, and appreciated for who we are and to form healthy, wholesome relationships with other people. Psychologist and mindfulness expert David Richo, Ph.D., has focused on how these healthy connections are formed and what is needed to keep them alive. He describes the “5 A’s” as the qualities and gifts we all naturally seek out from the important people in our lives, including family, friends, and especially partners. What are these 5 A’s? • Attention—genuine interest in you, what you like and dislike, what inspires and motivates you without being overbearing or intrusive. You experience being heard and noticed. • Acceptance—genuinely embracing your interests, desires, activities, and preferences as they are without trying to alter or change them in any way. • Affection—physical comforting as well as compassion. • Appreciation—encouragement and gratitude for who you are, as you are. • Allowing—it is safe to be yourself and express all that you feel, even if it is not entirely polite or socially acceptable. What Richo is describing, in essence, are those genuine needs we have that form the basis of secure, healthy relationships. The 5 A’s are what we all should

have received most of the time from our caregivers when we were growing up. They are also what we want in our adult relationships today. In his book How to Be an Adult in Relationships, Richo compares and contrasts the 5 A’s with what happens in unhealthy or unequal relationships. We have expanded his examples to emphasize the fact that the 5 A’s are what we needed when we were young to form secure bonds and that what we received instead was often the antithesis of the 5 A’s, which are all forms of minimizing or devaluing you and your healthy needs. Adapted from David Richo, How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving (Boston: Shambhala, 2002), pp. 1, 26-40, 50, 65. Obviously, Richo’s work points out that most people have been lacking the 5 A’s in some way in their lives. Most important, Richo emphasizes that you should only expect to have approximately 25 percent of your needs met by any one other person, especially in romantic relationships. Therefore, the goal in life is not to seek out validation or acceptance from others, but to cultivate your sense of worth and value from within—to learn how to provide yourself with the 5 A’s most of the time. In fact, dealing with obstacles and learning how to respond constructively to problems and setbacks (i.e., healthy emotion management) allows you to grow and learn healthy ways of caring for yourself. It teaches you how to take a balanced approach to life in which you do not act entitled, but you do not deprive yourself, either. Rather, you keep an open

attitude toward what life brings your way and are able to deal with it. In doing so, you develop deepening insight into yourself and the world around you. It’s no easy task to accomplish this, especially when you’ve spent most of your life agreeing with the content of your deceptive brain messages. This is why it’s so important to use the 5 A’s as a guide to remind yourself of what you deserve from the people in your life (and from yourself). The more you allow yourself to believe that you can care for yourself in healthy ways, the easier it will be to dismiss the deceptive brain messages and follow the Four Steps. We will discuss ways to incorporate a version of the 5 A’s with gratitude lists in chapter 11, but for now start noticing which of the 5 A’s are missing in your life and how you can start providing them to yourself. Doing this will help you reevaluate the content and veracity of your deceptive brain messages so that you can rewire your brain in healthy, adaptive ways. In the next chapter, we will provide you with many tips and recommendations our patients found helpful as they started using the Four Steps. With this background, you will then learn what each of the Four Steps is and how you can apply them to your particular deceptive brain messages.

CHAPTER 7 Moving Forward with the Four Steps Tips and Recommendations With a solid understanding of how deceptive brain messages are generated, both biologically and through events in your childhood, you are now ready to start learning the Four Steps. To help you prepare for your journey, we have filled this chapter with tips and recommendations based on the collective wisdom and experiences of our patients. They have gone through the program and know many of the obstacles you may face, especially in learning mindfulness and staying with the uncomfortable physical and emotional sensations whenever they arise. Let’s begin with a quotation from mindfulness expert and teacher Bhante Henepola Gunaratana. It beautifully encapsulates what deceptive brain messages are, what they do to you, and how they keep you from following the path of your true self: We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those [thoughts] for reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal pursuit of pleasure and gratification and eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We spend all our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying to bury our fears, endlessly seeking security. 16 To phrase it another way: We spend a considerable amount of our time engrossed in following deceptive brain messages until we begin to see them for

what they are and value our true emotions and needs. Learning to See How Harmful Your Deceptive Brain Messages Can Be The biggest challenge you will face as you start using the Four Steps is in believing that you are worth the time and effort required to challenge the deceptive brain messages and not give in to their commands. This is why we spent so much time teaching you about how your brain automatically ignores, minimizes, dismisses, neglects, and devalues your true needs and emotions and why we taught you about the 5 A’s. Up to now, that healthy side of you—the part that believes you are worthy and a good person—has been relatively dormant or severely suppressed by the deceptive brain messages. That’s why you have not been able to change your perspective of yourself or your actions: The unhealthy parts of your brain have been in charge. Many times our patients have asked us, “Well, if the healthy side is what I want to recruit, can’t I just think positive and everything will be okay?” Unfortunately, the answer to that question is no, but not for the reasons you might be thinking. The truth is if you really believed in those positive parts of you—that you were worth the time and effort—you could simply “think positively” and make changes relatively easily. The problem is that you believe more strongly in the deceptive brain messages than you do in your positive qualities. This is because your sense of self is so tightly fused with the deceptive brain messages and it explains why your habits are so hard to break. That’s one of the main reasons we developed the Four Steps: to help you break that unhealthy allegiance to the deceptive brain messages. In fact, once you can see how false and destructive the deceptive brain messages are, you naturally will believe more strongly in yourself and your right to follow your true goals and values in life. You will take a firm stand against those false messages and make an enduring commitment to your true self. Our patients began to change their perspective and believe what their Wise Advocate was telling them by using the Four Steps to increase their awareness of the deceptive brain messages. As they learned how to use the Four Steps, they were able to witness how often the deceptive brain messages surfaced and how much time, effort, and energy they were expending to follow those false

messages. The experience of learning how to Relabel, Reframe, Refocus, and Revalue was eye-opening for them because it allowed them to see that their time could be better spent on other pursuits and in healthier ways. Let’s turn to their stories now and hear how they took the first step to change their perspective on the deceptive brain messages. Abby, who avoids confrontation at home and has trouble making decisions, was constantly worrying about her family and questioning herself. “Literally, it took hours of each day out of my life,” she laments. “It was exhausting, but I didn’t know any other way of being.” As she recalls, “I finally realized that it takes so much effort to think things through over and over—it takes so much time and causes so much pain.” And it led to no positive results or forward progress. Instead, giving in to her deceptive brain messages only fueled them. “I realized the deceptive brain messages stay alive inside of me because I give in to the habits, the repetitive thoughts, and the ‘what-ifs.’ I told myself, if I give in, I am feeding into this monster inside of me. I’m making it stronger each time I do it and making myself weaker.” Conceptualizing the deceptive brain messages as a monster—as something that was trying to thwart her and take her away from her true self—is what finally inspired Abby to start making changes. With her resolve to use the Four Steps daily, she was able to “choose to use my energy to do something productive and healthy.” Similarly, John realized that his constant e-mail checking and worrying about Alicia’s whereabouts were draining him and taking him away from work, his interests, and a real life. “It used to be terrifying to think of getting rid of the symptoms. This is how I’ve always lived.” With time, he became frustrated by how the thoughts and checking were taking over. Despite that justifiable and healthy annoyance with the deceptive brain messages, he just couldn’t muster up the effort to change. Deep down, he wanted to act differently and have quality interactions with Alicia, but he felt considerable resistance. His deceptive brain messages were making him doubt himself and believe that he had to continue his unhelpful behaviors, such as checking e-mail and putting Alicia first, to receive love. “It’s kind of scary to do things differently,” he said, “but I was so tired of the same behaviors resulting in the same results.” Once he saw the choice—to be overrun by deceptive brain messages or take a stand against them for a healthier life—he made a commitment to himself to use the Four Steps every day. In addition to being exhausting, living under the domination of deceptive brain messages causes you to lose out on other opportunities and time, as Steve realized when he began to look at what his drinking was doing to his life. “I had this moment,” he recalls, “where I said, ‘Okay, I am willing to change, I cannot live this way anymore.’ The deceptive brain messages and drinking were running

my life. I was depressed because I wasn’t manifesting anything I wanted in my life. I wasn’t moving forward and saw everyone else as a problem. I was jumping from one thought to another.” His relationship with his wife was on the rocks and his daughters were angry with him. It took a terrible toll on him, as he describes, “The drinking and deceptive brain messages really tried to uproot my relationships. I can never get that time back, but I can change how I act moving forward.” Remembering what happens when he drinks or ignores his true feelings helps Steve continue forward with the Four Steps whenever he is tired or wants to give up. Ed had a similar realization to Steve’s. He, too, avoided important things, such as auditions and interacting with anyone he thought might reject him (e.g., a potential employer or date). As he recalls, “I would avoid doing a lot of different things. In other words, when the deceptive brain messages became very intense, I became very afraid, almost paralyzed. I remember times when I wouldn’t even want to come out of the house because I knew I would be running into all these things in a minute’s time that would cause me anxiety. It only takes a second to get triggered.” So he would avoid people, places, and opportunities in a desperate attempt to ensure that his Uh Oh Center did not fire and that he would remain calm. Over time, these unhealthy habits got hardwired into his brain. This avoidant behavior came at the steep price of loneliness and lost opportunities until Ed began to realize just how limited his life had become. Somewhere along the way, he says, “I made the decision not to dwell in it, not to fall for the trick. If I were to obey the deceptive brain messages, then I would really be sad and I would really be down. I told myself I can’t afford to do that.” He realized that he had the ability to help himself by not letting the deceptive brain messages take over. As he explains, “I just started to look at reality in the way that it is. I have the control to let me down or not.” Seeing that he had this power helped Ed persevere and overcome his unhealthy habits. This idea of having the power to make choices was critical to many of our patients, especially Abby who often was plagued by indecision. As she struggled with overthinking and repetitive worrying, she came to this conclusion: “I want to make choices in life and be able to live with those choices. Accept that I made choices. Refusing to make choices is making a choice. And, if I don’t make any choices in life, I will let the monster win.” Although it was initially scary to do so, Abby now makes decisions quickly and does not waste time second-guessing herself, thanks to her work with the Four Steps. Learning to see clearly the damaging effects of following deceptive brain messages was crucial in our patients’ evolutions. When they finally saw what their deceptive brain messages were doing to them, they were able to make a

commitment to themselves and to put forth a sustained effort to use the Four Steps every day. This commitment was based on their sincere striving to be free from the negative effects of these deceptive brain messages and a burgeoning belief that they were the people their Wise Advocate told them they were. THE TOLL OF DECEPTIVE BRAIN MESSAGES Whenever our patients were in doubt or felt defeated by their deceptive brain messages, they would remind themselves of the true facts about deceptive brain messages. Armed with this knowledge, they could strengthen their resolve to see the deceptive brain messages for what they were, dismiss their faulty logic, and instead act in healthy ways on their behalf. Some of those insights are listed below. When you’re feeling tired or want to give in, remind yourself that deceptive brain messages can: • Suck up your time • Take over your life • Exhaust you • Cause you to lose time or other opportunities • Restrict your life and activities • Cause you to avoid people, places, or events you enjoy • Cause discord in your relationships • Make you miss out on important relationships • Obscure your reality so that you think the negative messages are true • Keep you from following the path of your true self • Keep you trapped and serving others • Cause you to indulge cravings/urges/desires that lead to unhealthy habits Assessing the Impact of Deceptive Brain Messages on Your Life In chapter 2, you defined your meaningful goals and made a list of the things

you currently are avoiding (but want to do) and the things you do not want to do (but are). Your next step is to do what our patients did—clearly see how deceptive brain messages and their associated unhealthy habits are hurting you. What happens to you when you follow your brain’s false messages? Take a few moments to think of opportunities you’ve missed, people/places/events you’ve avoided, relationships that have been negatively impacted, and other consequences of paying allegiance to deceptive brain messages. Write them down below. We’ve included a few examples from our patients to help you get started.

With this awareness of how deceptive brain messages impact you and your life, you’re ready to move forward. The only thing left to do is think of ways to empower and inspire yourself when the deceptive brain messages strike. As you saw above, our patients took the first step when they decided that no matter how true the deceptive brain messages felt, they were false. The truth, they realized, is that they were worth the time, effort, and investment—and so are you. You will learn more about their journeys and how to use the Four Steps to your advantage in the pages that follow. To help you along the way, our patients shared these catchphrases they used that inspired or motivated them when they were feeling down or defeated. Use one of theirs or come up with some of your

own. • Only I have the power to let myself down. 17 • I don’t have unlimited time to flail around in the universe. • I don’t really want to give up ever . . . if I give up, what else do I have? • Reality is better than the fiction in my head. • I’d rather feel the uncomfortable sensations for a while (by not giving in to the false messages) and have my sanity. • What am I doing today to improve my life? • These thoughts and sensations are not real—do not give in to them. • Do not feed the monster. • Remember what it is like to give in—you lose time, energy, and relationships. • With respect to deceptive brain messages, it’s not what you think or feel, it’s what you do that counts. 18 • These deceptive brain messages have no power—they are false. EXERCISE: Write down what you will say to inspire and motivate you to keep going when you feel like giving up or believe the deceptive brain messages are true: THE FOUR STEPS Step 1: Relabel—Identify your deceptive brain messages and the uncomfortable sensations; call them what they really are. Step 2: Reframe—Change your perception of the importance of the deceptive brain messages; say why these thoughts, urges, and impulses keep bothering you: They are false brain messages (It’s not ME, it’s just my BRAIN!). Step 3: Refocus—Direct your attention toward an activity or mental process that is wholesome and productive—even while the false and deceptive urges, thoughts, impulses, and sensations are still present

and bothering you. Step 4: Revalue—Clearly see the thoughts, urges, and impulses for what they are, simply sensations caused by deceptive brain messages that are not true and that have little to no value (they are something to dismiss, not focus on). Tips for Beginning Your Journey with the Four Steps Through their work with the Four Steps, our patients made many pivotal insights —ones we think are important to share with you. The first and most critical is that the thoughts and sensations are overwhelming and difficult to confront, especially at the beginning. What our patients stress over and over is that living with the uncertainty—the doubt of whether following the Four Steps will help you—and refusing to act in your previous ways is scary, but not a reason to quit or give up hope. Here are their tips, insights, and words of encouragement as you start using the Four Steps. ALLOW THE SENSATIONS TO BE PRESENT, BUT DO NOT ACT ON THEM This is probably the hardest thing to do when you start using the Four Steps. When you refuse to give in to the content of your deceptive brain messages by not performing the action your brain is telling you to do, your Uh Oh Center fires even more intensely, which makes you feel extremely uncomfortable. You want to do virtually anything to get rid of those sensations, both physical and emotional, and know that simply following your deceptive brain messages will accomplish that task in the short term. The problem, as we all must learn the hard way over time, is that doing so will only fuel the negative messages and further entrench the maladaptive circuits ever more powerfully into your brain. Said another way, short-term relief rapidly causes more pain and suffering, not less. Although it was difficult to live with the uncertainty of whether or not following the Four Steps would help her, Abby vowed to allow the emotional

and physical sensations associated with deceptive brain messages to be present but not to act on them. Doing so was difficult. As she remembers, “It was intense and painful when I did not give in. I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin at times. But I sat with it and did not act on those false sensations.” Abby knew there was no other way. She says she “had to endure the pain of these uncomfortable sensations to get to the other side.” What she saw with time was that she did improve. “The relief comes in small packages,” she says. “It doesn’t happen all at once. It’s not a light switch. It happens gradually over time—you may not even notice all of the changes until much later when you reflect back, but it does happen.” Similarly, Steve explains the way his deceptive brain messages assailed him: “It’s a sensation that is very bad and you really want to get rid of it—that’s why you do those [unhealthy actions] again and again. It’s an unending cycle. So, the first thing would be to live with the uncertainty, the fear, and the pain that the deceptive brain messages and uncomfortable sensations leave you with.” Rather than fighting them or denying their existence, he recommends that you “stay with the intense feelings until you are able to look at them more objectively, from another perspective—then the deceptive brain messages and sensations are less damaging or upsetting.” We will talk more about how to deal with the uncomfortable sensations in the next chapter, where we discuss Step 1: Relabel. PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE A key to success, all of our patients agree, is wholesome repetition—literally just continuing to complete the Four Steps over and over while not acting on the deceptive brain messages. Over time, it becomes second nature because the “habit” of turning to the Four Steps to effectively deal with erroneous messages becomes ingrained in your brain. In essence, using the Four Steps to deal with stress or upsetting situations becomes your new, healthy response and replaces the unhealthy habits you have been using. Kara agrees: “Practice makes perfect. Just follow the steps, follow the four R’s, and you will notice results. It worked for me—you notice some kind of result pretty much right away. Once you’ve done your first Refocus, there’s a sense of achievement, and if you just keep at it, it will become gradually easier. Be patient—feeling like you’ve had a success spurs you on to keep going.” Although it seems straightforward, Steve makes this important point: “I think a lot of people think the Four Steps are simplistic—they think, ‘Hey, if I just do

these four things, I’ll be cured.’ It’s effective and it’s a great treatment, but it’s not easy. It takes practice.” Steve likens the Four Steps to the Twelve Steps in Alcoholics Anonymous. “You have to keep going through them, working them. It’s a continuous program. You’re going to have to apply and work through the Four Steps over and over.” As you do this, he says, “you can apply the Four Steps to many situations. The more you do it, the better and better you’ll get at it. To think it’s going to be easy and that you’re magically going to be able to do it without putting in the work is setting yourself up for failure and disappointment because it’s challenging.” That said, he encourages people to make the commitment to themselves and the Four Steps: “The more I just opened myself up and tried it, I saw that it worked.” JOURNAL YOUR SUCCESSES To help you realize you truly are making progress, Steve gives this advice to people who are new to the Four Steps: “Write down the successes that you have early on because it encourages you to keep going. It’s not always easy, but over the long haul, it does make a big difference and you will see how much progress you’ve made.” The main point to keep in mind is that you want to focus on the things you have accomplished, no matter how small or inconsequential they seem to you. Do not minimize, ignore, or neglect even the most seemingly minuscule achievement. Rather, use the 5 A’s and celebrate your successes. DO NOT TACKLE ALL DECEPTIVE BRAIN MESSAGES OR HABITS AT ONCE One point Kara often makes is that you should not try to be a “superhero” and take on too many changes at once. “It can be overwhelming and make you feel like you are failing, even when you are making progress.” Abby agrees with this and says she found great comfort and relief in knowing that she did not have to change all of her habits at once or go cold turkey. Knowing that she could, for a while, keep going with some of her habits, as long as she did so mindfully, helped. As she explains, “It’s way too much pressure if you think you have to change everything at the same time. Telling me I could keep doing some of the behaviors was almost like a relief.” She offers this advice if you maintain a few of your habits at first: “You have to do it mindfully. If you’re engaging in an unhealthy habit, the least you can do is tell yourself you are doing it and admit to

yourself, ‘That’s what I am doing.’ That’s helped me a lot.” This is using Step 1: Relabel to its fullest, meaning that you’re mindful and aware of your actions all the time—something we will discuss in depth in the next chapter. FOCUS ON PAYING ATTENTION When Ed started working with the Four Steps, he says one of the biggest difficulties he faced was learning how to pay attention. As he explains, “At [the beginning], the deceptive brain messages are very strong and dominate a lot of your attention. It’s very real to you.” He and most of our patients recommend simply beginning the journey by learning how to pay attention to your deceptive thoughts, impulses, sensations, and actions—and to Relabel them as such. At the same time, they strongly suggest that you be gentle with yourself and not beat yourself up for any thought or desire that runs through your brain. As Sarah knows all too well, “You have so much shame for having these symptoms. It’s important to be kind toward yourself. It’s about moving forward. It’s about forgiving yourself and knowing that you are a good person despite whatever your brain is throwing at you.” DON’T PROCRASTINATE! IT’S WHAT YOU DO THAT COUNTS A problem that many of our patients face is using procrastination as a way to avoid using the Four Steps. For example, their brains come up with reasons not to follow the Four Steps, such as being too busy or too tired. Alternatively, their brains flood them with the distracting thoughts that they aimlessly follow. Similarly, many people’s deceptive brain messages tell them they have to do the Four Steps perfectly or not do them at all. This is a cardinal example of the “perfect” being the enemy, even the assassin, of the good. All you really want is to put forth a serious effort to use the Four Steps every day. You are never trying to achieve perfection; rather, a serious effort not to act on the negative messages truly is good enough. Remember, you cannot control the initial thoughts that come into your head or the uncomfortable sensations you experience. That’s why we strongly emphasize and repeat as often as possible: When dealing with deceptive brain messages, it’s not what you think or feel that matters, it’s what you DO that counts! As Abby explains, “You just can’t control them and there’s no use in trying—it’s like a hamster on its wheel . . . you go nowhere.” Ed agrees and often tells people,

“Just do the darn thing! Don’t focus on the negative consequences your brain is trying to tell you [are inevitable]. Those messages are false and must be discredited whenever they arise.” While it sounds easy enough, John acknowledges that it’s hard work and that inertia and habit can be big obstacles. He found that when he started to use the Four Steps, his brain would come up with some other thing that he had to do before he did the Four Steps. “I would follow the deceptive thoughts wherever they wanted to take me. I was so caught up in how I felt [i.e., the emotional and physical sensations] that I could not see anything else. I had to just assume for a while that everything that made me feel uneasy or question myself was a deceptive brain message.” When he did this, he was able to “take a breath and think for a minute.” This space between the thought/urge/impulse/uncomfortable sensation and action allowed John to consult his Wise Advocate to make informed decisions based on his true goals in life. Of course, as we mentioned before, when you are dealing with your true emotions, goals, and interests, your thoughts, feelings, and actions all matter. It’s only when you are dealing with deceptive brain messages that your false, unhelpful thoughts and feelings—which are not representative of you or how you want to be in the world—do not matter. WHEN IN DOUBT, USE RATIONAL FAITH Another tip all our patients agreed on is this: A key to overcoming deceptive brain messages is to use the Four Steps even when you experience considerable doubt and to believe that you will get better the more you use the Four Steps. With this ability to believe in yourself and to persevere when you are feeling overwhelmed, you will be using rational faith: RATIONAL FAITH Believing in what you know to be true when doubt enters your mind. Rational faith helped many of our patients keep moving forward when their deceptive brain messages made them feel like they were about to do the wrong thing. As Abby explains, “Don’t have blind faith, have rational faith.” The

difference between them is this: Blind faith gives the power (and credit) for making changes in your life to some other entity, not the real you. Rational faith, in contrast, encourages you to believe that by trusting in the process, focusing on your true goals, and expending effort by following the Four Steps, you will achieve positive results that get you closer to those true goals. Steve agrees that rational faith is important, especially at the beginning of using the Four Steps when the deceptive thoughts, impulses, cravings, and uncomfortable sensations are the strongest. When he started using the Four Steps, he recalls, “it was hard for me to believe that just by following the Four Steps I could get another perspective and not believe the deceptive brain messages as strongly.” He describes it as being “like a leap of faith” because the more significant results and changes do not come until later in the process. As he remembers, “I think it takes a little bit of patience because of the very intense feelings. I think [really knowing that the Four Steps work] is only learned by experience.” In this way, rational faith is a leap, but it is a leap that takes you toward your true goals and values. The Four Steps Work What is it that you will learn from experience? That the Four Steps really do help you separate your sense of self from the deceptive brain messages and that by doing the hard work required, you will see results. As Steve stresses repeatedly, “The whole point is that you begin doing the work before you make the separation. The separation [between your true self and the deceptive brain messages] is made with time—the Four Steps are brilliant for that. The Four Steps are a wedge you can put between your brain’s [false] reality and the more clearheaded or mindful view of your Wise Advocate.” He uses this analogy to describe the process of how the Four Steps make a difference in your brain and life: In the old days there were the Fuller Brush men. They used to come sell brushes at your door and they were there every month. They’d give free samples and they’d almost literally get their foot in the door that way—no one could really close the door on a Fuller Brush man. The same thing happens with the Four Steps—

the principle of getting a little room in there, getting my toe in the door between the automatic, thoughtless reaction [and the] deceptive brain message. To try to work on expanding more and more time in between, to not start automatically reacting. Over time, and it does take some time, you begin to get this sense that you indeed are not your emotions and you are not your feelings and you are not even your thoughts. And then you have to practice these things. You have to practice having a different reaction to something. You have to change the way you react to these feelings instead of automatically assuming they are true and doing something with them. John agrees, saying, “It won’t happen immediately. I would say it’s normal not to see results at first. For anybody who is just barely beginning to understand the Four Steps, the separation can be really hard—to see the false reality of deceptive brain messages, to separate from them and look at them objectively.” Abby also found it difficult at first to make the separation: “It takes some time because first you have to understand what you are going through; you’ve got to be educated about what the deceptive brain messages are all about and then you start experiencing them and looking at that problem.” That struggle to see the false reality, which the deceptive brain messages have created in you, is hard. With time, she says, “you realize that the deceptive brain messages have no power.” And the more you apply the Four Steps and begin to see the deceptive brain messages from that more educated and empowered perspective, she says, “they diminish in importance completely.” When you refuse to give in to those deceptive brain messages and instead use the Four Steps, miraculous things begin to happen. As John remembers, “I was losing five hours a day to checking e-mail and thinking about Alicia. I had no life. When I started working with the Four Steps, I immediately got life back. By using the Four Steps, instead of spending five hours on those activities, I was spending thirty minutes checking e-mail or worrying about my relationship. I got four and a half hours back right away when I refused to give in to the deceptive brain messages and Refocus on something healthy instead.” We hope these words of wisdom will help as you start using the Four Steps and that you will come back to this section whenever you are feeling frustrated or defeated. As our patients repeatedly emphasize, there is hope and things do get better.

Summary To review, here are a few things to remind yourself of as you begin tackling your deceptive brain messages: • At the beginning, you may feel overwhelmed, but try as hard as you can not to give in to the deceptive brain messages or unhealthy habits. • Live with the uncertainty and stay with the sensations—do not try to change them. • Repetition and practice further your progress the most. • Just do it—don’t let your brain procrastinate or make excuses. • Journal your successes—it encourages you and shows you the progress you’ve made. • Be gentle with yourself. • Do things gradually—do not try to change all your habits or behaviors at once. • If you engage in an unhealthy habit, at least be aware of it and acknowledge what you are doing. • If all else fails, work on increasing your awareness of your deceptive brain messages and habits—pay attention to what is happening in your brain and body. • Be patient—feeling like you’ve had a success spurs you on to keep going.

CHAPTER 8 You Can’t Change What You Can’t See The Power of Awareness and Step 1: Relabel Ed had always thought of himself as a pretty observant guy. After all, he was a performer. He was in touch with his feelings and had an exceptional ability to study people, know what they were thinking, and surmise what they were feeling. He could see life from many angles and had a broad perspective on the world and how it works. Why, then, would he need to learn mindfulness? Isn’t mindfulness what he was already doing—observing and looking, knowing things as they are? Ed continued to think this way, despite his paralyzing fear of rejection, until we pointed out to him that for years he never “saw” his deceptive brain messages. Sure, he could look outward and see what was happening in others, but he could not apply those powers of observation to himself. Instead, he let the deceptive brain messages pass by unnoticed. Eventually, with an education on what deceptive brain messages are and how the Four Steps work, Ed learned how to survey his internal monologue, bodily sensations, and habits with precision guided by mindfulness. It was then that he realized that this inability to see his thoughts as deceptive and false was holding him back in innumerable ways. Ed describes the process of learning how to be mindful: I spent a long time paying attention to deceptive brain messages, living with those feelings and those beliefs of myself as being a certain way. That was all I knew. It’s just so habitual to ignore

what is happening inside you. To believe what your brain is telling you. When that’s your reality, how the hell are you going to know it’s a new day? It’s almost as if you have to struggle to realize that you can recognize a different flower in the bunch of bushes you’ve been walking by every day. When you finally are mindful, you realize you have never seen the yellow flower in there. And you don’t just walk by it assuming it’s a red one anymore. You look, you observe. When awareness starts to pop its head up, you have to be able to recognize it and let it happen. That’s what mindfulness is—being aware and seeing things as they truly are. In this analogy, Ed compares his belief that all the flowers are red with assuming that all the deceptive thoughts, urges, and impulses he’s had throughout his life are true. When he finally stopped and looked, rather than blindly following what his brain was telling him, he was able to realize that he had been viewing life through a harmful and inaccurate filter that caused him to see life from this one very skewed perspective—that of the deceptive brain messages. The way to deal with this blind spot, he learned, was to increase his awareness so that he could see his experiences with a new pair of eyes—his own. What Ed described so elegantly is the process of becoming aware of what your brain is doing as it is doing it and of truly learning how to see the deceptive brain messages for what they are. MINDFULNESS OR MINDFUL AWARENESS (AS APPLIED TO DECEPTIVE BRAIN MESSAGES) THE ABILITY TO SEE WITH FRESH EYES, FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE WISE ADVOCATE AND YOUR TRUE SELF 1. What the deceptive brain messages are and what they cause you to do. 2. How they are blinding you to all kinds of important information. 3. How they are causing you to experience only one version of life: a false one.

In this chapter, we will begin by teaching you about mindfulness, the foundation of the Four Steps. In fact, the core of Step 1: Relabel is designed to teach you how to become more mindful of your deceptive brain messages and habitual actions. When you are able to Relabel effectively, you can instantly see the deceptive brain messages arise in real time and call them what they are. That’s the whole goal of Step 1 and it is critical because this ability sets you up to follow the rest of the Four Steps. Obviously, you cannot Reframe the meaning of something (Step 2), Refocus on another activity (Step 3), or Revalue the entire experience as nothing more than the feeling of deceptive brain messages (Step 4) unless you can clearly see what is happening as it is happening and call it what it is. Mindfulness is your gateway to seeing the fallacy of the deceptive brain messages and to making new, healthy choices based on your true self. So, what is mindfulness? You’ve probably heard the term before and might even have an idea of what it encompasses. Although it’s helpful to have some familiarity with the concept, we want you to keep an open mind as we describe what mindfulness is as applied to deceptive brain messages. Why? Depending on the context and tradition, mindfulness can mean different things to different people. This leads to many common misunderstandings about mindfulness that need to be dispelled so that you can understand the Four Steps correctly. What is absolutely true, no matter the context, is that mindfulness is an experiential process. One of the best ways to think of learning mindfulness is that it is a lot like learning how to walk, drive, or play a new sport. Someone can teach you the basics and tell you what to do in a step-by-step fashion, but you will not really “get it” until you try it yourself. That said, you can learn a lot by understanding the principles underlying mindfulness and by following the exercises we have included in the remaining chapters of this book. So, let’s look at what mindfulness is and what it isn’t so you can start learning how to apply the Four Steps to your particular deceptive brain messages. Mindfulness Is an Activity, Not Merely a State of Mind Most people think of mindfulness as a state of mind, as being analogous to being “in the zone.” This is a common misunderstanding that can lead to frustration because mindfulness isn’t something you can just switch on like a TV and expect that it will remain in that state indefinitely. A more accurate way of thinking

about mindfulness would be tuning in to a specific TV station because this analogy implies actively doing something and it requires you to pay attention. In fact, the best way to conceptualize mindfulness is as an activity, not a state of mind or way of being. Unlike being tired, anxious, or excited, you can’t simply be mindful without effort. You don’t just fall into mindfulness or suddenly say to yourself, “Oh, I’ve been being mindful and didn’t realize it,” in the same way that you can passively be listening to music. Mindfulness, like any activity, requires effort, vigilance, and willingness, because in each moment of your life you are choosing whether to be mindful or not. And, like most activities where focus and skill are involved, the more you practice, the better your abilities become. In this way, mindfulness literally is a training ground for your mind—a mental gym where you strengthen your powers of observation and awareness so that you become more proficient at seeing what is happening in each moment of your life. Mindfulness Is Awareness At its core, mindfulness is about awareness—being fully knowledgeable that something is happening right now, in this very moment. In this way, mindfulness is not concerned with the act itself, but with the awareness that something is transpiring. For example, if you are being mindful right now, as you read these words, you are aware that you are reading. You are not engrossed in the details of each word, but you are aware of the process of reading as it happens. Similarly, if you are experiencing a deceptive brain message right now but you are focusing only on the content, then you are thinking, not being mindful. However, if you are aware that you are thinking or that you are experiencing a deceptive brain message, then that’s mindfulness. A wonderful example Henepola Gunaratana provides is the following: If you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is memory. When you become aware that you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is mindfulness. If you then conceptualize the process and say to yourself, “Oh, I am remembering,” that is thinking. 19 When properly understood, mindfulness teaches you how to be in contact with

your actual experience. For example, if you are sitting in the sun and you feel the warmth touching your skin and are clearly aware of that sensation, then you are being mindful. Similarly, if while you are eating something you take the time to really notice what the food tastes like, how it feels in your mouth, whether it is sweet or salty, how the taste changes over time, and so on, you also are being mindful. Your goal as you learn how to Relabel is to be aware of the proces—of what your brain and body are doing in each moment of time. Do not concern yourself with the content or reasons right now, just the process of what is happening. To help you with this endeavor, we developed the following exercises to help you become aware of what your body is doing without your knowledge or conscious consent. 20 INCREASING AWARENESS OF YOUR BODY EXERCISE #1: AWARENESS OF MOVEMENT While you are engaged in another activity (such as reading, working, watching TV), try to pay attention to every movement you make for five to ten minutes. Try to notice everything you do. Here are examples of activities or movements you may not be aware of but do habitually: • Crossing/uncrossing your legs • Scratching your skin • Moving your clothing around • Changing your body position • Tapping repetitively • Moving things around in your environment • Stretching • Sniffling • Clearing your throat INCREASING AWARENESS OF YOUR BODY

EXERCISE #2: AWARENESS OF SENSATIONS Sit somewhere quietly for five minutes—make sure there are no distractions. Turn off your cell phone, shut down your computer, put any reading materials away. Literally sequester yourself in a place where no one will disturb you and nothing is likely to grab your attention. It’s often easier to do this with your eyes closed, but eyes open are fine, too. With no goals or objectives, simply sit somewhere and notice what bodily sensations come up. Do not focus on thoughts, emotional sensations, or other phenomena, such as what you are hearing. Focus only on the sensations you experience in your body, such as tingling, itching, pressure, pain, discomfort, lightness, energy, warmth, cold, fullness, and dryness. Do not try to influence the sensations in any way. Most important, do not try to change the sensations or ascribe meaning to them. Simply let them bubble up with an attitude of curiosity and acceptance. Be open to whatever arises. When you are done, try to remember what physical sensations arose in that time period and whether you were able to simply notice them or if you got caught up in them. For example, did you ascribe meaning to them? If your stomach was gurgling, did you think to yourself, “Oh, I must be hungry,” or did you simply notice the gurgling itself? If you felt an itch, did you scratch it? If you experienced pain, did you say to yourself, “I wonder if something’s wrong” and think further about it? Becoming aware of your movements, sensations, impulses, and automatic tendencies to think about and to ascribe meaning to your sensations with exercises like these is the first step in increasing your awareness. As we have mentioned before, you cannot change what you are not aware of and you cannot make choices about things you do not know exist. Until you are aware of your impulses, you simply act. So, your goal is to become more aware in each moment of your day. From our experience, noticing what happens in your body is a great place to start. For the next day or two, try to notice whenever you move or have a physical sensation. Just notice what pops up and do not try to change it or give it meaning. Remember, the goal of mindfulness is not super awareness of everything, but the ability to be increasingly more aware of what is happening as it happens. It’s about being “awake” to your experiences and capable of noticing

life as it transpires. Awareness and Focus Are Not the Same Thing, but They Are Related Another common misconception is that awareness is just another word for focusing. From the exercises you just completed, you might have a sense that awareness is different from focusing, though they are related. Focusing is an activity in which you consciously direct your attention. Awareness, on the other hand, is being fully knowledgeable of whatever is happening right now, in this very moment. Both are important and necessary for mindfulness and rewiring your brain. With deceptive brain messages, focusing on them without awareness of what they really are is what has gotten you into trouble. Whenever you focus on and give in to deceptive brain messages, without simultaneously realizing what they are, you are allowing your attention to be grabbed. You are not being mindful and are not aware of what is happening. For example, if someone just rejected your idea, you might be thinking, “Well, it was a good idea. I have no clue what’s wrong with him. Why can’t he see that this would really work? I bet if I showed him the other spreadsheet, the one with the detailed breakdown, then he’d get it and want to know more . . .” and so on. When you are in this “mode,” you are absorbed in and focused on the content. However, if you are able to take a step back and say, “Wow, I am lost in thought; I’m following these deceptive brain messages,” then you are aware of what is happening and are being mindful. Although they are both rooted in mindfulness, this difference between awareness and focus when you are dealing with deceptive brain messages is so important that we made them two distinct steps. When you closely look at them and understand what they each are trying to achieve, you see that Step 1: Relabel is centered on increasing awareness of your deceptive brain messages—in other words, knowing when one is present. In contrast, Step 3: Refocus is concerned with how you direct and focus your attention (and thereby change your brain). To help you experience this firsthand, try exercise #3. This exercise teaches you how to focus on your breath as an object of meditation. Of all the mindfulness exercises available, this is the most common and popular for people

to try. It is a great way to train your mind to remain in the present moment and is a great entry point into traditional meditation. ENHANCING YOUR FOCUS AND AWARENESS EXERCISE #3: AWARENESS OF BREATH To help you see how focus and awareness are related, we are going to ask you to make your breathing the object of your attention in this exercise. Learning how to focus on your breath is beneficial because it gives you an anchor, something to come back to, whenever your mind wanders. Similar to the bodily sensations exercise, sit somewhere quietly for at least five minutes—make sure there are no distractions. Turn off your cell phone, shut down your computer, and go somewhere no one will disturb you and nothing is likely to grab your attention. It’s easiest to complete this exercise with your eyes closed. With no goals or objectives, simply notice your breath as it goes in and out of your body. Place your attention on the inner rim of your nostrils, where you can feel the subtle movement of air as you breathe in and out. As with the other exercises, do not focus on thoughts, emotional sensations, or other phenomena. Focus only on your breath and do not try to influence your breathing patterns in any way. If you notice that your attention is wandering away from your breath, note what is happening and then go back to your anchor, your breath. For example, if you start thinking about what you are going to have for dinner, how you are going to fit in exercising today, or running through a list of things to do before the day is done, note this by saying to yourself “thinking,” “planning,” or just “wandering,” and then go back to your breath. Many people find this exercise is easier with counting. One of the most effective ways is to count each in-breath and out-breath separately up to 10. For example, count the in-breath (inhalation) as “1,” the out-breath (exhalation) as “2,” the next in-breath as “3,” and so on up to the out-breath of “10.” Then repeat this exercise until you are able to maintain awareness of your breath without counting. If you are able to be aware of your breath the entire time, you will be able to count up to 10 in one pass. Don’t be surprised or

disheartened if this is not the case. When you are just starting out, this ability to count up to 10 (and only up to 10) in one fell swoop is a rare event. In many cases, especially early on, you likely will find that you forgot what number you were on or find that you are on 14 (i.e., you forgot to stop at 10) before you notice that your attention has wandered. Obviously, the longer you are able to sit with this exercise, the more adept your mind will be at noticing when your attention has wandered. If possible, make a plan to notice your breathing for up to thirty minutes each day—doing so will definitely hone your ability to recognize when your attention has wandered and enhance your powers of observation. Mindfulness Includes Seeing That the Deceptive Brain Messages Are False Throughout our description of mindfulness, we have deliberately kept one word out: reality. Why? It can be a loaded term, depending on the context, 21 and it implies that the thoughts, impulses, urges, desires, sensations, and habits you experience are not real in some way. The truth is, they are real—you are experiencing them. The problem is that those deceptive brain messages, sensations, and habits are false and they take you away from following your true goals and values in life. We want you to see with clear eyes that: • The content of the deceptive thoughts is not valid or true • The urges, impulses, and desires do not need to be satisfied • You have choices beyond the narrow options your deceptive brain messages are presenting to you Learning how to see that those three statements are correct is the whole point of the Four Steps. Therefore, when we talk about mindfulness as applied to deceptive brain messages, we want you to start seeing that the negative messages, sensations, and habitual patterns are false and that they are not representative of your true self. We will talk more about this in chapter 9 when we teach you how to Reframe the content of your deceptive brain messages. For now, simply keep in mind that

while the experience of deceptive brain messages is real, their content and directives are false. Mindfulness Is Nonjudgmental and Judgmental at the Same Time When most people think of mindfulness, the word nonjudgmental almost universally comes to mind. When applied in a global way, this is a serious mistake and it is one that we need to make sure you do not make. Why is this so important? When you conceptualize mindfulness as nonjudgmental, it gives the impression that anything goes, that no matter what you do, mindfulness will simply accept whatever happens as perfectly fine and appropriate. While it is true that some parts of mindfulness require you to suspend judgment so that you can see what is happening, including the ugly and unpleasant aspects of life (e.g., your darker thoughts), there are places where judgment is absolutely necessary. The distinction lies in whether you are looking at and observing your thoughts or whether you are evaluating your choices and actions. Remember what we said before: You cannot control the initial thoughts, impulses, desires, or cravings you have—it is impossible to do so. However, you can and must choose how you will respond if you want to change your life and how your brain works. Therefore, when you are trying to be aware of your thoughts and impulses (i.e., your deceptive brain messages), you must not judge them. You need to let them bubble up so you can see what is there. Berating or shaming yourself for the deceptive brain messages that arise is counterproductive and takes you away from being mindful. If you see that you are heading in that direction, remind yourself of what Sarah says to herself: “You have so much shame for having these symptoms. It’s important to be gentle with yourself. It’s about moving forward. It doesn’t matter what your deceptive thoughts or feelings are in the end, it’s how you act. You have to have a certain amount of gentleness and acceptance.” This is when nonjudgmental mindfulness comes in and is so important. The other side of the coin, as we’ve said, is your actions. Here, you want to judge things in a rather aggressive way. Why? Think about what nonjudgmental means when taken to its extreme—it implies that it would be okay to hurt someone or to act in a reckless manner purposely. Applied in this way,

mindfulness would simply look at your actions, note them, and accept them as perfectly legitimate. Clearly, this is taking things too far and could be used as an excuse to act in a way that is devoid of values or morals. That’s why we spent time explaining that deceptive brain messages are anything that takes you away from your true self—from your sincere striving to achieve things in your life based on your values and goals. Mindfulness, when appropriately understood, does not dispassionately recognize all actions as equally acceptable, and nor should you. The bottom line is this: • Do not judge your initial thoughts, impulses, cravings, or desires (i.e., your deceptive brain messages and uncomfortable sensations). You have no control over their presence and it is not your fault that they are there. Let them be present and notice them without acting on them. • Do judge your actions, including mental ones, such as overanalyzing or “perfectionism.” You have control over your actions, including overthinking, and mindfulness does not give you a free pass to act recklessly or in a manner that would hurt you or others. You are responsible for what you do once the deceptive brain messages arise. Objects of Mindfulness As you can see from this brief overview, mindfulness is a complex topic because it encompasses your entire life—everything you think, experience, and do. Realizing this can be overwhelming: How can you be mindful of everything? Although the possibilities are endless, the point is to be aware of some aspect of your current experience, not everything at once. To help you conceptualize common objects of awareness, we have divided the following table into three parts based on broad categories of experiences you can have and be aware of. Later, we will outline the kinds of experiences frequently related to deceptive brain messages. For now, simply allow yourself time to understand the various kinds of phenomena you can notice if you start looking. As Yogi Berra was known for saying, you can learn a lot just by watching. SOME OBJECTS OF MINDFULNESS

From the table above, it’s clear that anything your mind can perceive, sense, feel, or think can be an object of mindfulness. This means that all your deceptive brain messages, sensations, and activities can be objects of mindfulness, too. In fact, if you look closely, the categories in the table above are ones frequently found in the cycle of deceptive brain messages we described in figure 1.1 in chapter 1. However, as we mentioned, the goal right now is not to analyze or focus on any particular thought, impulse, or activity, but to learn how to increase your awareness of experiences with Step 1: Relabel. STEP 1: RELABEL Identify your deceptive brain messages and the uncomfortable sensations: Call them what they really are. For example, we want you to use your increasing powers of awareness to notice whenever the following arise—without getting lost or engrossed in thoughts about them: • Deceptive brain messages, including your thoughts, impulses, desires